“Al­lyuh don’t have burg­er bread?” a dis­ap­point­ed shirt­less gen­tle­man yes­ter­day asked the shop­keep­er. It’s not the kind of ques­tion you’d as­so­ciate at an es­tab­lish­ment like Span­ish Harlem in San Juan, but now it’s part of the every­day fab­ric of the busi­ness.

The well-known bar is now a neigh­bour­hood mi­ni-mart.

From cook­ing oil to split peas, herb grinders to milk, they are well stocked.

And while it may raise some eye­brows to see their turn­around, it is at the same time not sur­pris­ing.

Like El Pecos and Kam Wah be­fore them, the think­ing seems to be if gro­ceries are al­lowed to op­er­ate, then why not be­come one.

Five kilo­me­tres east­wards, the own­er of Bite Me Bistro, Ar­vand Ma­haraj, said the changeover to a mi­ni-mart or what he’s call­ing a ‘Bode­ga’, was a no brain­er.

“We were fac­ing pend­ing doom, we all have mort­gages and staff and tak­ing pat­terns from the su­per­mar­ket chains, we saw they were get­ting away with sell­ing pack­aged food and the Prime Min­is­ter said you could sell food from the su­per­mar­ket if you had an in-house kitchen so we did it.”

The restau­rant’s din­ing area has now been re­placed by ta­bles sell­ing veg­eta­bles and condi­ments.

On the in­side, there are new shelves with items such as flour, snacks and milk. Ma­haraj ex­plained to Guardian Me­dia that the re-reg­is­ter­ing of the busi­ness to in­clude ‘Bode­ga’ was not a dif­fi­cult process.

“The le­gal part of it took about two to three weeks, we need­ed to do a name change and wait for ap­proval, which in­volved chang­ing the na­ture of the busi­ness to in­clude gourmet gro­cery as well as restau­rant,” he ex­plained.

Ma­haraj said he was in­formed by se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers that a li­cense to op­er­ate a gro­cery was not nec­es­sary.

“They told me you don’t have to have a li­cense to op­er­ate a par­lour or mi­ni-mart, a gro­cer’s li­cense is to sell al­co­hol.”

Ma­haraj ex­plained that all meals are pre-pack­aged and avail­able on a shelf.

“You can’t place an or­der by the counter any­more, you just come in and take what’s avail­able.”

But that re­quires ad­di­tion­al equip­ment such as warm­ers and stor­age fa­cil­i­ties. And while the le­gal process was the easy part, the mon­e­tary in­vest­ment was quite the op­po­site.

“I put in about 50 thou­sand dol­lars to start, that went in­to the cash­ing soft­ware, we had to run elec­tri­cal for all the new equip­ment and buy stock.”

The in­ter­view with Ma­haraj was in­ter­rupt­ed a few times by cus­tomers and couri­ers from the food de­liv­ery apps. With a wry smile, Ma­haraj said, “I wish I did this months ago.”

But even with busi­ness pick­ing up and the re­turn of his reg­u­lar cus­tomers, Ma­haraj still has a lot on his mind.

“Well I’m just wor­ried about roller coast­er Sat­ur­days, you know that feel­ing when the Prime Min­is­ter has his news con­fer­ence, I’m just wait­ing to hear what’s hap­pen­ing to know if I al­so have to bring out a wash­er and dry­er and say I’m a laun­dro­mat.”

With a ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed staff, Ma­haraj said even when the re­stric­tions on restau­rants are lift­ed, he may con­sid­er a hy­brid of this new busi­ness mod­el with the old.

But right now, he, like many oth­ers, is plead­ing for the re­sump­tion of food ser­vices, say­ing lives and liveli­hoods can be pre­served.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s of­fice to find out just how many busi­ness­es have re-reg­is­tered like Bite Me Bode­ga did but we were un­able to reach any­one from that de­part­ment.